American Moves Ahead with High-Speed Satellite Wi-Fi Deployment, Will Start Charging for ViaSat Service in March

American Airlines provided an update on the progress of its satellite Wi-Fi retrofit program.

The airline said that all of its A320 aircraft and legacy US Airways A319s will have been retrofitted with Gogo’s 2Ku system by the end of 2018. Legacy American A319s and A321s will receive ViaSat’s satellite service by January 2019 and November 2018 respectively, and the entire 737 fleet is expected to have the ViaSat system installed by April 2019.

American has already deployed the ViaSat service on half a dozen aircraft and access to that system has been free for the past few months, although the airline said it will begin to charge for the service starting in March.

Passengers with Gogo monthly subscriptions will be able to use their subscriptions on both Gogo- and ViaSat-provided systems going forward, in order to provide what the airline termed a “reasonably seamless” experience.

The big news in the hotel world was the 2017 opening of the Gran Hotel Manzana Kempinski in Havana, the city’s first proper grande dame of a hotel to open in the island nation. Located in the historic Manzana de Gómez building, Cuba’s first shopping mall in the center of Old Havana, the hotel is truly in a class of its own.
An oasis in a city that’s somewhat crumbling and …

A more complete story of how a Horizon Air employee was able to steal, fly, and subsequently crash an aircraft taken from Seattle-Tacoma International Airport Friday evening is beginning to emerge as details come to light.
Richard B. Russell flew a Bombardier Dash 8 – Q400 turboprop plane for almost an hour over Puget Sound, even performing aerobatics, until it crashed on Ketron Island, off the shore of Steilacoom. Mr. Russell, …